Dilan Payne

Dilan Payne Headshot

Dilan Payne is a junior at Milton Academy in Milton, MA. She adores anything language-related, serving as News Editor for her school's newspaper, leader of her school's Classics Club, and a staff member at her school's literary magazine. She spends her afternoons at her dance studio and recently founded a Special Olympics dance program there. She shares her love of learning by helping out in the kindergarten classrooms at her temple. In her rare moments of free time, you'll find her reading, taking long walks with her dog Oscar, or laughing through another failed round of the New York Times Categories game with her mom.

Blog Posts

Mister Rogers Collage

Time-Out, Teshuvah, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood

Dilan Payne

Mister Rogers, as magical as he was, could never solve the problem. He only gave me the sentences I would need to fix it myself. 

Topics: Television
Collage by Dilan Payne, bust of Lucretius.

Holding Faith at Arm’s Length

Dilan Payne

I didn’t lose my faith while reading Lucretius. But I did lose my willingness to let faith finish my sentences for me.

Pearl Lang

Drafts with Double Spaced Lines: Pearl Lang and her ‘Song of Deborah’

Dilan Payne

When Lang dances The Song of Deborah, she restores the uncertainty that the Book of Judges omits. 

The author's great-grandmother dancing at bat mitzvah.

Tic Tacs and Torah: My Grandmother’s Loud Devotion

Dilan Payne

I began to see her devotion not as carelessness, but as care expressed in movement, in improvisation, in insisting on presence rather than perfection.

Donate

Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women.

donate now

Get JWA in your inbox

Read the latest from JWA from your inbox.

sign up now

How to cite this page

Jewish Women's Archive. "Dilan Payne." (Viewed on June 13, 2026) <https://qa.jwa.org/blog/author/payne-dilan>.